Lea Letzel

Lea Letzel is an artist, director and pyrotechnician who develops interdisciplinary performative works at the interface of sound and music, media art, dance and space. She studied at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at Justus Liebig University in Giessen and at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. She has been trained as a pyrotechnician and special effects technician since 2015. Lea Letzel has participated in international exhibitions and performances, including at Witte de With, Rotterdam, Maschinenhaus Essen, Theater Duisburg, Philharmonie Duisburg, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Bonner Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung, FrankfurtLAB, Acht Brücken Festival Köln, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg, PACT Zollverein Essen, Münchner Kammerspiele and Kaaitheater Brüssel. She has received various scholarships and grants for her work, including the Hessian Cultural Foundation’s studio scholarship in London 2017/2018. She completed a residency as a Goethe-Institut artist-in-residence at Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto (JP) and most recently at the Panormos studio of the Palermo cultural ensemble (Goethe-Institut/Institut Français) (IT). From 2019 to 2022 she was appointed as an artistic member of the “Junges Kolleg” of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.
Lea Letztel’s dissertation project in the inter-university doctoral program “Cultures in Transformation” aims to develop a contemporary aesthetic of pyrotechnics. Against the discursive background of the current phase of global upheaval, which is caused by massive political, social and ecological crises and calls into question the contemporary relevance of pyrotechnics, she is investigating its aesthetic potential as an artistic material in its own right.

Dissertation project:
Pyrotechnics as Performance: Aesthetics, Materiality and Ephemerality in Contemporary Performance Practices

First supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulf Otto (LMU München)
Second supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Nicole Haitzinger (PLUS)

From the perspective of theatre studies and my own practice as an artist, my dissertation project develops a contemporary aesthetic of pyrotechnics and examines its potential as an artistic material in its own right. Against the backdrop of current global upheavals – from political and social to ecological crises – I question the relevance and performativity of pyrotechnic art and analyse this constellation of performance, materiality, notation and liveness.

Six case studies, focussing on the use of pyrotechnic effects in art and society as well as on examples from art history since the 1960s, illuminate forms and formats of pyrotechnic aesthetics and the knowledge formations they contain. Particular attention is paid to the significance of ephemerality and waste in contemporary performance practices, which I locate in the context of changing economic conditions of art production.

The dissertation project thus provides groundwork for cultural and theatre studies research by establishing pyrotechnics as an independent artistic medium and locating it within a performative discourse framework. In addition, it contributes to the formation of concepts in the German-speaking discourse by putting canonised concepts such as performance and material into a new perspective and critically reflecting on them by looking at sustainability and ecology.